12. LOST, AND FOUND
The "backwater village", as Richard had called it, was hidden in the depths of a thick tropical jungle. Trade to the city was nonexistent, travel routes unmarked and grown over, ships unable to dock anywhere near the city – even if the city wanted them there. Nor would an airship have found a clearing big enough to land in. But the turtle - Booskaboo, Loki had told her its name was - pulled right up to the beach, a small strip of white sand that would barely have accommodated a rowboat.
"Well, Valda, how do we get there?" asked Richard, after some fruitless time searching for an obvious path through the jungle.
Valda frowned, furrowing her brow in concentration. "I'm working on it. There's some ancient magic at work here." She had been trying to make heads or tails of it for hours now; she doubted that before she had raised to Grand Divina, she could have made even begun to comprehend it. The pattern was ordered, but so complex that it made her own spells feel clumsy and unsophisticated. There were all eight elements to be sure, but trying to pick out any one was like trying to untangle a ball of yarn the size of a house.
She contemplated the problem for several minutes, irritation growing and distraction her no matter how hard she tried to push it down. Frustrated, she turned to her companions to explain the paradigm. Her voice cracked slightly, admitting it was stretching her abilities. Why was she becoming so upset at finding a puzzle she could not solve?
The men did not berate or push her, only looking at her in concern as she swallowed the lump in her throat. The Queen of Reason did not enjoy feeling like a failure.
Richard put one hand gently on her arm. "A ball of yarn, you say?" he told her slowly. "That sounds much harder than anything I could work with, but you're much better at it. Maybe if you picked a thread, and followed it?"
The way those soft brown eyes were on her now, she could not say no. She lifted her head, and nodded.
One thread. Instead of trying to picture the thing as a whole, she looked for where it was different, and slowly the elements resolved themselves to her mind. She was tempted to reach for Light, her greatest strength now, but suddenly chose Ice instead. She was of the snowfields; ice was part of who she was.
Valda couldn't explain exactly how she did it, but as she reached, the threads of ice latched on and held. Now she could picture the patterns of water by themselves; and more importantly, tell where they were going. They pulled her, now slightly to the southwest.
"This way," she announced, and Richard squeezed her arm before letting it drop. The path only revealed itself a few yards at a time to her, but once it did, it was as clear as water.
--
Everything in these woods was overgrown, she realized, as they trudged through them, following the path of the river. The bugs, the lizards, the birds who dove for them with mindless rage for those invading their territory.
The clincher was when a giant rabite, of all things, whumped to the ground before her from somewhere above in the trees.
Valda screamed like a girl, for once, at this giant, slavering version of the ordinarily innocuous creatures. It hopped towards her, biting with teeth that were now big enough to do some real damage.
She recovered herself to send some shards of ice its way, irritating it enough to stop it for a second, just enough time for Loki's sword to neatly skewer it. Snapping jaws now gurgled the last of the creature's life. It really was quite grotesque when she could look at it eye-to-eye.
"Now that's a monster," he said, wiping the blood off on the great rabite's bluish-gray fur. "When foul Mana corrupts even rabites, for Goddess's sake..."
"It can't be good," Valda finished for him, shuddering.
--
The choice of following the water element had an unexpected consequence. The path led straight into the river.
They must have been close to the source of the stream, luckily, so it was not so terribly deep, stopping inches short of Valda's hips. Nor was the tropical river cold. But it did make for some slow going, and they were too fearful of losing the trail to try following the river bank.
Eventually, gratefully, Valda felt the Mana shift to lead them out onto the bank, slogging through the grass in their waterlogged clothing. The men could do little with wet breeches, but Valda tried fruitlessly to squeeze the water out of the skirts of her gown. With night descending and a chill filling the air, she called a halt to start a blazing fire with Salamando's magic. Besides drying their uncomfortable garments, it seemed to keep the overzealous bugs of the forest away.
Morning rewarded them as, with now-dry and presentable garments, by noon they reached the city of Pedan.
Valda was no expert on architecture, but she could see the same construction, and many of the same details, that she had seen in the ruins of the Ancient City of Light. The golden bricks, the dwelling piled on top of one another... all eerily familiar, giving that feeling of returning to an ancient world.
But there was one thing Pedan had, that the other had not. People.
They were everywhere, in fact, roaming through the activities of daily life like every other town in this world. With one substantial difference. From every single one of them, except the very youngest, she could sense magic ability, some quite powerful.
They gave little notice of the three foreigners strolling into the gates of their city. Valda thought that might have a lot to do with her. Only a fellow magic user would be able to find their way to this city of wizards; anyone able to work through their puzzles would have a reason to be there.
Not that she had any idea what that reason would be. They were here looking for something that would give them an advantage over the Dragon Emperor, and maybe this time he would be done for good. But they knew so little of the answers, that they barely knew the questions to ask, leaving them looking like goggle-eyed magic-using tourists in the central square.
"We could stock up on some supplies," Loki suggested. "There's some shops here. Maybe they have something special."
"Coming, Valda?" asked Richard.
Valda had been staring in wide-eyed fascination as soon as they had entered. Not just at the city itself, though it was mind-boggling to behold a city of this splendor, keeping itself secreted away from the rest of the world. But the magic... It wasn't exactly the same as seeing a Mana Stone, but the feeling was close.
"Go ahead," she told the men, breathing in the Mana around her. "I think there's somewhere else I'd like to go." Somewhere, in this town, were the wielders of these enormous forces, far more power than she could dream of touching. And she was determined to find them.
She strode forward, purposefully, as if pulled by an unseen force, only to be stopped by a hand on her arm. She turned to look at Richard.
"Be careful, Valda," he told her, worry marring his features. "I can feel all the Mana in the city, too. You never know what might happen. Come back in an hour, or I'm coming to find you."
Valda nodded, and continued forward as he let her arm slip from his grasp.
--
Valda could have sworn the temple looked like a small, squat building from the outside, as she stepped through on the trail she was following. But inside she found herself walking down a hallway that stretched as far as the eye could see.
Mana filled the space around her. She had thought she had felt it strongly when she had been to Wendel, before Angela's birth, but this was humbling in its intensity. It quivered, shivered, pulsated, until it seemed her own heart was beating right along with it.
Yet she was not afraid. Dark and light intermingled, shadows cast by the candles flickering against the walls, the simple duality of the opposing elements comforting her in the stony silence. If only it did not remind herself of nothing so much as a tomb. But whose?
The light at the end grew slowly brighter, resolving itself into a grand room lit by candles everywhere. Before her, eight wizards, four men and four women, stood arranged in a semicircle, all dressed in identical robes of some multicolored fabric that changed color every time it moved in the slightest. At first glance she believed the wizards to be old, but upon second glance she realized there was an aged wisdom in the eyes of all that did not match their varying chronological ages. Behind them stood a large, ancient tablet, words in an unknown language etched across its surface, softly glowing but with Mana, not of light, seeming to want to say something…
And one more thing, her active mind noted as she pondered the figures before her. Every single one of them had violet hair, from palest lilac to evening indigo. The color belonged to the Altenans, she thought, one hand involuntarily reaching below her ear to tug at her own waist-length amethyst mane. They might be her ancient, distant cousins, all of them, and with this realization, she straightened, a bit of her fear diminishing, to gaze each in the eye in turn, patiently waiting to see who might speak first.
"Come to us, Grand Divina," the woman on the far left solemnly intoned. Valda took a few steps forward and suddenly felt the sudden urge to stop, realizing as she did that she was now equally far from each of these priests.
She suddenly felt thoroughly surrounded. "Why am I here?" she demanded of the congregation before her.
The man on the far right spoke. "Come to us, Grand Divina, if you wish to know the secret of Mana."
The secret of Mana? Valda wondered. What was there to know? If there was anything to know, it would be known here, where the use of Mana had begun, so many centuries ago.
She reached out, not with her hand, but with her heart and mind, with trepidation. Ever so slowly... just a little further... and then...
It snapped clearly into focus then. Images, thoughts, feelings flooded her brain, filled her soul. It was too much, flowing all at once, and without thinking, she recoiled back. As the door slammed shut, she cursed herself. She prodded gently, but it was already gone, and she could not figure out how to make it open again.
Some Valda remembered though, and she clung to it with a desperate certainty. "The Goddess..."
"Yes," a second woman spoke. "The Goddess."
"The Goddess..." Valda tried to remember, to force herself to hold onto the memory, but it was slipping away like sand through her fingers. There had been something in there, about the Goddess, about the fading of Mana... something that she hadn't thought possible... it was too important to forget...
"Queen of Altena," the second man spoke. "You were of us, once. You might have been with us today."
Valda raised her chin in pride. She spoke from what she knew, but somehow, deep within, she felt as if her ancestors spoke too. "You know why we left," she told them. "You let it all fall apart, letting Mana fall into chaos without the Ancient City of Light to balance you. Mana ran wild, disordered, and you even dabbled into the powers of the Underworld. You turned your back on the Goddess, and we left to find something simple, pure, to touch the elements on their own."
"And that you did," the third woman replied. "But you lost something, too. You now know only water, ice, structure, order. Even chaos, the opposite of Mana, is in its own way part of the whole. Order is only effective if there is some chaos to be ordered. Of your kind, only the Black Magus can truly face this truth. That's why they have the most power of all."
"If they can survive it," Valda replied sharply.
The third man spoke. "It's no use," he said. "She cannot remember the secret of Mana."
"She's been touched," the woman in the center intoned harshly, this one's face clearly creased with the lines of simple age. Valda flinched involuntarily from the vicious tone, as if slapped. "She's been tainted." A knot formed in Valda's stomach. She didn't know what this ancient sage spoke of, but it chilled her to the bone. "This one should have shone like a beacon for the Goddess's messenger, but now the messenger will never find her."
"I chose the light!" Valda cried, and suddenly she was back on a cliff in a storm, tears freezing on her windburned cheeks. The feelings had been nothing she had ever experienced before, not even fighting the Dragon Emperor itself could compare to that desperate fear for something she could not understand nor stop.
The woman turned to look at her with undisguised hate on her withered face. "You chose, but sometimes choosing is not our own."
The last man of the circle, perhaps the eldest of all, had remained silent but now spoke, his voice a quiet whisper that somehow seemed louder than any who had spoken before. "Be still," he intoned, with a peaceful reverence, towards the ferociously angry crone. "It is not fate that determines who will be found by the messenger of the Goddess. There is no chosen one. One might have hoped that this one would be found, but failing that, it will be another, and we can do no less than hope that chance will favor us and find someone worthy."
He turned to her, and his eyes seemed to know her soul. "We have done all we can for you, Grand Divina. Leave now. I fear your fate is sealed," he concluded with an ominous finality. His last words echoed in her head as Valda turned and ran.
--
Valda fled the temple, leaning against the stairs of another house to catch her breath. She was overwhelmed by what she had seen, what she had experienced, and even more frightened by the things she could not remember. Light and Dark, the Goddess and her messengers, fate and chance…
"You look like could you some help."
Valda jumped at the voice on the stairs above her, but the woman she whirled to face was just an ordinary woman, nondescript and kindly, not one of those she had encountered in the temple.
"Why don't you come in for some tea," the woman suggested. Valda, suddenly slumping against the railing in exhaustion, could only nod, and pulled herself up the stairs and out of the sun to enter a small, but comfortable domicile.
A young man brought her a cup of some steaming tropical infusion, which Valda sipped gratefully, her head clearing as she did so, her racing heartbeat returning to normal. She took in her surroundings, one large room around which books were scattered liberally.
"What are all the books about?" she inquired of her host.
"My son and I are trying to figure out the location of the Mana Stone of Darkness."
The Stone of Darkness. The legends surrounding the shadowy Mana Stone were older even than history, old enough that no one except perhaps the Elementals themselves knew the truth of it. That Stone had broken once, the tale ran, and the God-Beast inside wreaked havoc on the world before the ancient warriors and mages were able to seal it back.
The woman nodded as Valda repeated what she already knew. "Indeed. Those were the great magicians of ancient Pedan, so long ago that even here much of the story has been lost. But I feel... I think... Mana is changing, and perhaps the Stone will be returning before too long... If we can figure out where, we can leave some record of our findings before it is too late. The fate of the people of Pedan is uncertain, we have hidden for so long but how long before we are found..."
That tickled something in the back of Valda's head. "Fate... do you think that is all there is for a person?"
The old woman looked at her. "We have a saying here in Pedan. Ninety-nine percent of a person's life is fate - the other one percent is your hope guiding you. What do you hope for?"
Valda pondered for a moment. She hoped for a great many things. She hoped for her country, she hoped for her people, she hoped for the world. But shamefully, above even these things, she hoped for her daughter. That was what guided her in so many ways now, wanting Altena to be safe so it would be there for her daughter to lead.
"I hope for a great many things," she finally said. "But I don't know how to make them happen. I use all my power, and it's not enough."
"You have all you need, to go as far as your fate will let you. You just need to learn how to use it. I can show you some things you do not know."
Valda leaned forward in interest.
"Your strength is in light, I can tell," the woman began. "Order. Structure. These are the things you know. Each element powerful, but limited in its solitude. Do you know how to mix the elements?"
"I do," Valda replied, proudly. She had been developing her talents in that area for quite some time, and it wasn't so easy to do without the spell descending into a chaos she was not equipped to control. Few others in Altena could even come close to her in this regard.
"How many elements?"
"Two or three, sometimes even four."
"How about all eight?"
That stopped Valda cold. Darker classes did things like that, but the results often weren't pretty. Turbulent, seething masses of Mana struggled to free themselves from the caster's control, and it took all the wizard's strength to make it do what she intended before it turned on her. It was something of a job hazard of those who dared try it.
When she voiced her concerns, the woman shook her head. "No. That is the Dark way of doing so. You will never be able to do it that way, you have already lost that path. What you need to learn is the way to do it using your talents, now."
"Tell me," Valda asked, pleadingly, wanting it so badly she could almost reach out and touch it. "What is it you know?"
The woman looked at her, speculating. "This type of magic is almost the power of the Goddess herself. She was the one who first brought all the elements into order, after all. It is not easy, but I think you have the heart, and the intelligence to learn."
"There are two ways to do it. One is to blend all eight into each other, equally, keeping each maintained in opposition to its counterelement. Then together - " The circle she began forming was small, barely there at all, but there it was, what she had not thought possible. All eight elements, melting together, the colors shimmering brilliantly.
"Like a rainbow," Valda breathed.
"More than a rainbow, which is something which just is. While it may look peaceful, this churns inside with an energy of its own, and it is a struggle to keep them all perfectly balanced, before it all falls to ashes. We call this Rainbow Dust."
"It's like the Mana Stones," Valda noted, remembering the shimmering colors that filled every Stone she had ever seen. Was this the very nature of the Goddess? Something tickled her memory, and abruptly she recalled that she had used something not terribly unlike this, to send the Dragon Emperor running back to his hole. But she had created it wrapped around Light, that time, to give the final push, with the powers of Lumina and the Fairy running through her. She hadn't been able to reproduce anything like it since.
"It is," agreed the woman. "The sealing magic of the Stones is formed like this, as are other ancient and powerful spells. Altena once knew the secret of Rainbow Dust, but perhaps it has been forgotten. If you found your way here, you have already discovered the spells that keep Pedan locked away from the rest of the world. You could open the gate to the Holyland itself, with enough of this magic. The drawback is, that to have all eight together in harmony, you lose some of the strength of each one."
"The second way to combine the elements," she continued, "is to follow one with its opposite, right behind the other."
"That's magician's play," Valda scoffed slightly. "Anyone with enough practice can rapidly cast."
"We're not talking about two separate spells," she was chided. "They are formed together, yet kept separate so as to not destroy each other - like this."
Abruptly, a fire broke out in the center of the table, and before Valda could even cry out, water poured over to quench it. Valda blinked. She could not figure out where one spell ended and the next began.
"This is a Double Spell."
"That's impossible," she breathed. But if it could be done... It would be virtually impossible to defend against both opposites at once. It would attack any weakness.
"Not at all, though very difficult. It can be done with any pair, save dark and light. This is because by the time one gets to a level to use this, one already has chosen one over the other. Nor can a gray path use this; you must respect the separation. If you are truly a Grand Divina, and have enough raw strength, you will be able to use it."
"What about a Black Magus? Can they use this?" Valda had never understood how the dark-dark mages wielded Mana, and this seemed a good chance to find out
"In a sense, but it is not the same," she was told. "From a Magus, it gains a power all its own. You have already forgotten what I told you earlier. Your strength is order and structure. Use it wisely."
--
The Grand Divina meandered through the city of Pedan, seeing little as she lost herself in her own thoughts, trying to process everything she had seen to find some small shred of hope. It was getting harder to find. She remembered something from years ago, about grabbing the Goddess's power like a branch in a storm. She wished she did not feel so terribly the same now.
"Valda!" A shout brought her out of her reverie, and the sound of running footsteps. Before recognition of the voice had even fully set in, Richard had grabbed her shoulders and turned her forcefully to face him.
"Where have you been?!" he demanded, rage overtaking his ordinarily joking expression. "We've been looking for you for hours! The sun is almost going down! You could have been anywhere, you could have wandered out into the jungle, you could be in one of these buildings..."
Valda bore the tirade, incredulously, as Richard screamed at her, his face going positively blood red, in the middle of the main street of Pedan. The citizenry stopped to stare, gawking at the foreigner causing a scene, before shuffling on to mind their own business. Pedan had enough problems of its own to bother with them, apparently.
It was Loki, coming up behind Richard to lay a hand on his arm, that finally ended the outburst. At the older man's grip, the Prince of Forcena let his anger go, his expression descending into a weariness that the Queen of Altena had never seen on the man whom she had once known all too well. Even years ago, pursuing the Dragon Emperor across the world, part of them had told themselves that it was all a game. But there was something here in this city, or perhaps something within themselves, that knew it was much more.
A long silence hung between the old friends, Valda looking quizzically between the two others, Richard hanging his head with eyes downcast, Loki bearing a grim expression that never wavered. There they stood, their solemn mood holding them together like a cage.
Richard finally was the first to speak. "I'm sorry," he mumbled towards the ground. Valda leaned in to squeeze his hand amiably.
Loki filled in the blanks. "Well, I suspect you probably had the strangest experience of us all in this town, Valda," he told her. "If we can have weird experiences here, with only a cursory knowledge of magic, who knows what you have found here."
"What happened to you?"
"We hadn't planned on anything special, just went to the shop to get some supplies and check out their armor. We bought a few things, but nothing special or magical, just some better stuff to help us out," Richard spoke up, gradually recovering himself. He glanced at Loki, and something seemed to pass between them.
"And?" Valda prodded.
Loki sighed. "It's just a little something, I don't know if it even means anything, or if it's just the stress getting to us. I was turning to leave, when suddenly I heard my son's voice, clear as if he was right there in the room, begging me not to go to Dragon's Hole. I might have let that slide, but I looked at Richard, and he had this funny expression on his face."
"I heard it too," Richard admitted. "I don't know why, or how, but there it was, but we couldn't see anything."
Valda was pensive for a moment, trying to figure out what it all meant, but Richard broke her concentration. "So, where did you go?"
Briefly, she sketched out her experience in the temple, and her refuge in the house of the scholars. "I don't like it here," she finally admitted, feeling childish for allowing such a simplistic emotion to drive her.
The men listened intently, however, nodding their agreement. "This place creeps me out," Loki added.
"Perhaps we could find a place to stay outside?" Richard suggested. As much as Valda disliked camping, at this point in time she would do just about anything to get away from Pedan and its ancient memories.
--
Valda tossed and turned, her worries keeping her awake. She stared at the sky above, sleep eluding her.
Somehow, lost in her thoughts, she had not heard Richard sneak up on her, and suddenly he was leaning over her. "Can't sleep?" he whispered.
"No," she murmured back, looking at the man who seemed almost a stranger, but who once had been so much more.
"Let's get up and go for a walk," Richard urged, taking her hand and tugging it plaintively the same way Angela sometimes did. A twinge of her heart reminded her this was the father of her daughter, and even as she instinctively pulled away, the memory made her turn to look him in the eyes. They were doubtful, uncertain.
"Please," he asked her, his desire clear for once. Somehow, she could not say no; but neither could she bring herself to say yes, nodding as he slipped a hand under the small of her back to help her up. Dressed only in her flowing silk undergarment, she slipped out with him into the humid tropical sky.
For a long while they remained in silence, ambling directionless, but somehow found themselves climbing upwards, towards the top of the hills overlooking Pedan. As they gazed down upon the ancient city come again, it seemed to shimmer, waver out of existence, not entirely like what was between the two of them themselves.
Richard wrapped his arms around her, his embrace comfortingly familiar, and Valda leaned back in what she believed was acceptance.
He was not convinced. "You're stiff," he told her.
"No, I'm not," she denied.
He turned her to face him. "Yes, you are," he told her, with all the presence and arrogance she had ever remembered from him. "And you have been for quite some time. How many times were you in my bed before we left Altena?" She couldn't believe he was speaking to her like this. "Any time I wanted you, all I had to do was snap my fingers to get you to take off your clothes. I wanted you there with me more than anything, but every time I had you, it was something missing, something that I wanted to be there all over again."
Valda's tone was sharp. "You seemed happy enough to take."
"You seemed more than willing to give," he replied, turning her face to his with a raw anger. "And every time, it was like you just had another job to do. It must be so easy for you, to just take another man, another consort for the Queen of Reason, with no further thought. If I had only known that was all I ever was to you -"
"That's not true!" she barked back, rage suddenly filling her as well. "You must know I wanted you more than anything, wanted you with my whole heart! I remember it all, remember what it felt like, having you close, closer than anything! I remember crying out how much I loved you, never wanting to let you go..." And with the memory, tears came to her eyes as before, wishing things could be the way they once were. She fought the urge to hide her head in his shoulder, turning away to the black night beyond, fearing she had already said too much.
Nevertheless, she found herself with little resistance as he leaned in close. "Why, Valda, why?" he inquired, anger still fluid within him, but sadness overtaking it from behind. "Why won't you let me get close to you, as we once were? What has changed?"
"What do you want from me?" she cried into the stillness of the night.
"Everything," he told her, and said the rest with his touch.
She could not say more, any more than she dared look back in his eyes, but her emotions drained the strength out of her body, and as his arms began to caress her softly, sliding from waist down her legs in a tragically familiar stroke, she did not resist. When he leaned on her shoulder to nuzzle her neck, then kiss it with those feathery teasing kisses she knew all too well, she did not fight. When she felt his fingers tangling in her long purple hair, to twirl through it and delve in once again, she gave in, turning her body ever so slightly towards him, her eyes downcast still. As he turned her further, she raised her head to his, to see a familiar look in his eyes. No anger now, nothing but what she had seen once, so long ago, as he stammered "I love you," so gently, so awkwardly, bringing up memories of a night in Forcena, so long ago.
They said nothing more. There was no point. Past was past, and what would be today, would be. She slid her own arms around his neck to peer back at him expectantly, and waited to see what he would do next.
He only looked back at her, a sense of worry creasing his features, a fear of defeat.
"I want us to make love," he finally spoke. "Not just me. Both of us. You and I, the way you once wanted to. I can't let myself believe you've forgotten completely. If you remember anything of then... show me, before I lose my memories of you completely..." And he leaned back, his grip loosening on her, but his gaze never changing.
As his arms loosened on her, two sides of her fought within, but she already knew which had won. She stretched over him and lowered her body to lie next to his, lost in the moment of nothing but this man next to her.
Their eyes met, yet he waited, and Valda could wait no more. She leaned in to kiss him, and he met her lips, with every kiss the two drawing closer with a passion they had not felt in Altena. They lay that way for long moments, reveling in the closeness.
His hand went to the neckline of her dress, inquisitive yet determined. She breathed deeply as it slipped off her shoulder.
"I want to love you," he breathed, "like we never have before. I want to feel you close to me, heart and soul, now, if not ever again."
She could not speak, only nodding before she pulled him to her once again. As she wrapped her body around his, high on the mountaintop, all that was in her head was Richard, only Richard, and the way they felt in this moment.